Schooled in Magic 5 - The School of Hard Knocks

by Christopher Nuttall

  She studied them as they walked, noting just how finely most of them were dressed. Once, it would have impressed her, but she had a feeling that she was looking at people quite like the lords and noblemen of Zangaria. They dressed importantly, and acted importantly, in an attempt to convince others that they were important. The more she looked at them, the more she was reminded of some of the rich girls she’d known from Earth, the ones who had always had the latest fashions or cell phones. They’d acted important too.

  “You have to be quite rich to establish a home here,” Lady Barb explained, as they walked through a long market street. The prices, Emily noted, were several times what they would have been in Dragon’s Den. “It’s the ultimate sign of wealth and power to have a home in the White City. Even those who work as tradesmen have to have a sizable fortune before they can work here.”

  “Nice work if you can get it,” Emily muttered. It reminded her of stores on Earth where the prices were always higher than other stores, but because they were seen as fashionable they attracted customers with money to burn. “Who lives here?”

  “The Grandmaster is perhaps the only person you know who maintains a permanent residence here,” Lady Barb said, as they reached a large building. “My family has their own establishment, but it belongs to the family rather than one person alone.”

  She led the way into the building, up a long flight of stairs and then smiled as they found themselves on a balcony, looking down at a large table dominating a room the size of a dance hall.

  “This is a World Game, Emily,” she said. “You may want to play yourself one day.”

  Emily stared in frank disbelief. She’d played Chess and Risk and several other board games on Earth, but what she was looking at rivaled computer games for complexity. The board below her showed the Allied Lands, with hundreds of playing pieces in position and notations showing everything from cornfields to populations and mining towns. She’d never really had the time or equipment for such computer games–and she would have sworn the game below her was impossible for any pre-tech society.

  But they have to train their memories, she thought. They don’t have anything to jog their minds if they forget.

  She looked up at Lady Barb. “What is the point of this?”

  “Plotting out the future, they think,” Lady Barb said, with a shrug. “And also having fun.”

  She grinned, then led Emily along the balcony and into a side room. Emily sensed a flare of magic surrounding her for a long moment, but it faded away harmlessly. Lady Barb stepped to one side, allowing her to see the man sitting in front of them, his hands clasped in his lap and eyes cold and bright. And she realized, as she bobbed a curtsey, that she recognized him.

  “Master Grey,” she said. As before, Jade’s master looked rather like a monk: bald, muscular and grimly determined to trample over whatever opposition barred his path to his destination. And there was a sense of abiding dislike in his eyes that bothered her more than she cared to admit. “I thank you for meeting us.”

  Master Grey rose to his feet and bowed, slowly, in return. “I have little to say,” he said. “But what I have to say is important.”

  “Of course,” Lady Barb said. She motioned for Emily to sit down. “We appreciate this meeting.”

  Emily wondered, as Lady Barb passed them both mugs of Kava, just where Jade was. But she had a feeling that Master Grey was just waiting for her to ask that question, purely so he could refuse to answer her. Instead, she clasped her hands in her lap and waited, patiently, for him to start talking.

  “There is little I can tell you about Mountaintop,” Master Grey said. “All students are expected to take Oaths of Secrecy upon entering the school, oaths that remain binding for the remainder of their lives. I cannot give you many details without breaking my oaths.”

  Then what good are you? Emily thought, nastily. Master Grey was a powerful magician, and Jade spoke highly of his master, but Emily simply didn’t like him. He’d seemed to take a dislike to her the moment they’d first met and it hadn’t improved since. What is the point of this meeting if you can’t help us?

  “We understand,” Lady Barb said.

  Emily frowned. No one had asked her for an oath. “Are Oaths of Secrecy expected from students at Whitehall?”

  “Not until you reach Fifth Year,” Lady Barb said, shortly. “Master Grey?”

  Master Grey leaned forward. “There have been reports of shifts in the balance of power,” he said. “The MageMaster is growing old and feeble. His ability to keep his subordinates in line may no longer be assured. Some of them may be acting independently of any authority.”

  Emily was still mulling over the oaths. There were some fields of magic, she knew, where oaths were expected from any would-be students, but she’d never heard of an oath so binding that it was expected of every student at a school. It rather suggested that Mountaintop had something to hide, something it wanted to keep from the rest of the Allied Lands. And that was more than a little worrying. There were horrors aplenty throughout the Allied Lands, horrors all the worse for few thinking they were horrors, yet Mountaintop had something to hide? What could it be?

  She dragged her mind back to the present as Master Grey continued to speak. “I would caution you against becoming involved in any quarrels,” he added. “They tend to end badly for all concerned.”

  “Obviously,” Emily said, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice. “They always do.”

  “Emily,” Lady Barb said, warningly.

  Emily felt her face heat and looked down at the ground.

  “I will be in position, as you requested,” Master Grey continued. “But you do realize that any form of intervention will be tricky.”

  “But not impossible,” Lady Barb said.

  “Not impossible,” Master Grey confirmed.

  He stood up in one smooth motion, towering over Emily. “My apprentice will be seconded to Whitehall for the duration of your time at Mountaintop,” he said, warningly. “I would advise against sending any letters out of Mountaintop. They will almost certainly be read.”

  And alert Mountaintop to my friendship with Jade, Emily thought. “I understand,” she said, out loud. “I won’t write any letters to him.”

  Master Grey eyed her for a long chilling moment, then stalked out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Emily watched him go, then turned to Lady Barb. Her tutor looked annoyed.

  “Better not to insult someone like him,” Lady Barb said, darkly. “He was pushing against his oaths.”

  “It was useless,” Emily said, tartly. She had come to think of Lady Barb as a mother, a confidante who was also a strict disciplinarian, but she wasn’t about to hide her opinion. “He told us nothing.”

  “He may have told you more than you thought,” Lady Barb said. She pressed her lips together, then motioned for Emily to follow her. “And you should know just how dangerous it can be to press against a sworn oath. He could have sacrificed a great deal just trying to help us.”

  She paused. “And he will be in position to help, if possible,” she added. “We should be grateful that he is willing to risk himself so extensively.”

  Emily was far from convinced, but left the matter alone. Instead, she accompanied Lady Barb to a hostel–Lady Barb had flatly refused to use her family’s establishment in the city–and dumped her bag on the bed, then allowed Lady Barb to show her some of the sights. The sense of abiding strangeness surrounding the White City only grew stronger as they walked the streets, leaving her utterly unsure of what she was sensing. She tried to explain the sensation to Lady Barb, but the older woman said nothing. Emily honestly wasn’t sure if she was keeping her mouth shut deliberately or simply didn’t understand Emily’s halting explanations. Perhaps it was yet another thing that only made sense to someone born in the Allied Lands.

  The next three days passed slowly, too slowly. Emily rapidly found herself bored, but tried to simulate alertness as they walked from room to room,
inspecting the different World Games and admiring the players, though most looked half-dead as they played, as if their minds were elsewhere. She honestly couldn’t understand how the players kept so much complexity in their minds, and wondered why they played at all - although they definitely seemed to get something from it. In fact, two players became so wrapped up in the game, they ended up throwing curses at each other and had to be separated by the Mediators. By the time Lady Barb said she could walk back to the portals and go home, Emily was thoroughly sick of the whole affair and the strange city.

  “Remember to look unhappy at being sent home,” Lady Barb advised, as Emily picked up her bag. “There isn’t a magician in the Allied Lands who wouldn’t be happy at having a chance to network here. Or a mundane. You fit into both worlds, and you should love it.”

  Emily sighed. She would have preferred being completely unnoticed, but that would have defeated the point of visiting the city. Instead, she’d had to endure a constant stream of attention from various magicians, some old enough to be her great-grandfather, all of whom were interested in talking about Shadye, Mother Holly or Void himself. If Lady Barb hadn’t been providing chaperonage, Emily suspected she would have fled the city days ago. The written marriage proposals had largely dried up since she’d become Baroness Cockatrice, but a handful of the younger magicians hadn’t been shy about asking her to consider taking their hands in marriage.

  She walked up the long flight of stairs to the portal chamber, wondering–again–why they didn’t charm the staircases to move automatically. She might have no difficulty walking, but other visitors had real problems. One old man had been trapped in a magical wheelchair and he would have been unable to get down the stairs under his own power. Perhaps it was just tradition... tradition, it seemed at times, was a force more powerful than the strongest magics she knew.

  She pushed the thought out of her head as she reached the portal, readied her mind and then stepped through it...

  ...And something went wrong. Very wrong.

  There was a sudden surge of magic, a thunderous crash that slammed into her thoughts... and then she plunged into darkness.

  Chapter Five

  FOR A LONG MOMENT, AS SHE slowly returned to awareness, Emily was so badly disoriented that she honestly wasn’t sure of where she was or what had happened. Her head hurt, so terribly she thought she was dying, while her entire body was twitching uncomfortably. What had happened?

  And then she remembered stepping through the portal. Had she forgotten to prepare herself for the jump? Or...

  Her eyes opened, but her vision was so blurry that she could barely see anything. Panic flickered at the corner of her mind, but she closed her eyes again and forced herself to try to think straight. Her stomach heaved as new stabs of pain flared through her head, then settled down. Something was very badly wrong.

  Mountaintop, she thought, numbly. They jiggered the portal.

  “Emily,” a voice said. “Can you hear me?”

  It took Emily several tries to respond. “Yes,” she said. “What... what happened?”

  “You stepped through the wrong portal,” the voice said. It was female, soft enough to avoid setting her head off again. “Can you open your eyes and sit up?”

  Emily obeyed, slowly. Her vision was still blurred, but as she forced herself to sit up it started to clear, revealing a tall girl sitting beside her. Emily’s hands twitched uncomfortably as a glass was pressed into her hands, then she lifted it to her mouth and took a sip. The water felt wonderful against her cracked lips, then tasted heavenly as she swallowed it. It occurred to her, a moment too late, that it might have been drugged, but she couldn’t stop herself finishing the glass. She needed the water too badly.

  “You’ll be fine,” the girl said. “I have a potion for you to drink too, when you’re ready.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said. They didn’t want to kill her, she told herself, and they could have drugged her when she was unconscious if they’d wanted to. “I...”

  Her head swam as she finished the water and looked around. She was lying on a bed in the middle of a large room, which looked to have been hewn from dark stone. The only source of illumination was a light globe floating over their heads, casting a dull radiance over the room. She glanced down at herself and discovered that she was still wearing her robes, although they felt unclean against her skin. At least she didn’t seem to have thrown up, she reassured herself. Maybe she’d just sweated so badly she needed a wash.

  “Drink this,” the girl said. She pressed a small glass into Emily’s hand. “It’s something to help you recover.”

  Emily took it, gratefully. It tasted as foul as she’d expected, but her head cleared once she’d taken the first few sips. The girl watched her intently until she’d finished the glass, then took it and placed it on a side table. Emily shook her head, running her hand through her long hair, then forced herself to swing her legs over the side of the bed and stand. Her legs threatened to buckle for a long moment - the girl caught her arm and held her for a long moment - then steadied.

  “You’re recovering quickly,” she said, “but you should really stay on the bed until you are ready to move.”

  “I’m ready to move now,” Emily assured her. A quick check revealed she was still wearing her snake-bracelet. The charm she’d placed on it to make the bracelet impossible to remove seemed to have worked. “And... where am I?”

  “You’re at Mountaintop,” the girl said. She let go of Emily’s arm, then held out a hand. “I am Nanette, Head Girl.”

  Emily took Nanette’s hand and studied her. She was tall, with tanned skin, long dark hair and a face that reminded Emily somehow of herself, perhaps a few years older. And yet... Nanette carried herself with a confidence and an easy grace that Emily couldn’t help admiring. Nanette was surrounded with a haze of magic that marked her out as a powerful and well-trained magician. Emily couldn’t help being reminded of Lady Barb, without the weariness and cynicism that marked the older woman. She wanted to be like Nanette when she grew up.

  “I’m Emily,” she said, shaking Nanette’s hand. “How did I get here?”

  “Accident, as far as we can tell,” Nanette said. She let go of Emily’s hand and stepped backwards. “But the Administrator will explain all that, once you speak with him. I’d advise having a wash and a change of clothes first.”

  Emily felt herself flushing. Magicians were encouraged to wash regularly, in stark contrast to just about everyone else on the Nameless World. Even the nobility didn’t bathe more than once or twice a week, something that had disgusted her when she’d first heard about it. They had a tendency to smell quite badly, particularly the men. She allowed Nanette to show her into a small washroom, where she discovered a spare pair of dark blue robes. It was no surprise to discover they were the right size for her. She checked the robes for unpleasant surprises, then went to the toilet, washed herself and then pulled on the new set of robes.

  You’re a prisoner here, she reminded herself, as she stepped back out of the washroom. Her companion was waiting patiently. You cannot afford to relax.

  “Follow me,” Nanette ordered. She paused. “I assume you can cast a light globe?”

  Emily nodded, a little insulted. Light globes were among the simplest spells in the book; she’d mastered them within the first few months of her time at Whitehall. She also knew how to cast a spell to allow her to see in the dark, like a cat, but she kept that to herself. It wasn’t so commonly taught to students below Fourth Year, despite its obvious advantages.

  “Good,” Nanette said. She led the way towards the door and out into the passageway, her light globe bobbling ahead of her. “Cast one if you feel the urge.”

  Emily wasn’t sure what she’d expected from Mountaintop, but she certainly hadn’t expected dark, claustrophobic passageways. The darkness pressed around them like a living thing, so shadowy that she had to force herself to refrain from creating a light globe of her own. She couldn’t help
the impression that they were walking through an abandoned mine–there were marks on the stone walls that suggested as much–or that there could be anything lurking out there, within the darkness. Even the light globe didn’t seem to illuminate more than a few meters around them. The shadows seemed absolute.

  She closed her eyes, feeling out with her mind. There was an omnipresent background hum, a sense of magic, just like in Whitehall, but there was something very different about it, something that nagged at her mind. The magic currents seemed less intense, yet also considerably more focused. She opened her eyes again as she sensed magic flaring in front of her, then started as she caught sight of a hooded figure emerging out of the darkness and sweeping past them. It was all she could do to remain calm as magic warped and twisted around the figure.

  “A proctor,” Nanette said, bluntly. “You get used to them.”

  Emily swallowed. “What do they do?”

  “Keep order,” Nanette said. “Don’t get on their bad side.”

  They reached a heavy stone door. Nanette paused, then pressed her hand against it, muttering a spell. There was a glow of light from where her hand touched the stone and the door slid open, allowing more light to spill into the passageway. Inside, it was warm and cosy, almost like Whitehall. Emily felt a surge of relief as Nanette led her inside and closed the stone door behind her. They walked through another stone door without incident, then stopped in front of a third. Nanette knocked, and waited. A moment later, the door opened and she motioned Emily inside.

  “Lady Emily,” a masculine voice said. “Welcome to Mountaintop.”

  Emily saw a man rising from a stone desk. He was tall, taller than her, seemingly in his early forties. He had a thin line of gray hair, but his scalp was bare, reminding her of a monk. His body was strong and powerful, the fine robes he wore doing nothing to hide the muscles under his skin. A wand hung at his belt, suggesting that he felt powerful and experienced enough to risk using one on a regular basis. Beside it, there was a sharp silver knife and a tool she didn’t recognize. His entire body was surrounded by a haze of magic, as if he couldn’t be bothered trying to hide his presence–or if he wanted to impress her with his power.